HAPPY HALLOWEEN

Here is a fun post for Halloween which has nothing to do with pottery and everything to do with childhood memories. I saw this double feature of "horror" movies back in 1967 or 1968 at a Halloween Scream Fest at the Stand Cinema in Plattsburgh, NY along with my best friend Chris. At the time the pairing of Jesse James/ Frankenstein's Daughter and Billy the Kid/ Dracula made perfect sense, since then all I can think is what the heck were they thinking and who in their right mind green-light these films. The times certainly have changed but there is always another really bad horror movie looming on the horizon and someone who will fund it. Enjoy at your own risk.

GELT BOX

It is funny how things start and despite the purpose, the origin of a piece sticks with you. I have always made covered pieces, including small covered boxes and the like all the way back to my CSU days. Just after I left CSU and set up my Hillbrook studio, I was making small covered box forms when a client asked me for something a bit specific. What she wanted was small covered boxes with a pre-determined diameter, that resembled tops (upside down mind you), that were brightly decorated and had the interiors covered in gold gilt. As I was to find out the boxes were to be gifts for Hanukkah and would be filled with Hanukkah gelt chocolate coins. The chocolates are wrapped in gold foil wrappers and resemble gold coins and commonly come in little mesh bags but my customer wanted to put them in something a bit fancier so I set about making a dozen of them for her, several which found their way to Israel and France. I have made them ever since, more specifically as small decorative covered boxes, but the origin of this little pot has never left me and even makes me a bit nostalgic for those days making pots in my basement in good old Cleveland.

FOUR SIGHT

There is a profound simplicity , honesty and beauty to the "ordinary" pottery of the original mingei movement. Pots that stressed utility and function married with common aesthetics that everyday people could connect with. There is a profund The pots of Hamada Shoji, Kawai Kanjiro, Murata Gen, Sakuma Totaro and Ueda Tsuneji (上田恒次) among others were inspired and created to be used and continue on varying folk traditions that seemed to be suffering at the hands of an unbridled output of industry and mass production. The Mingei movement like the Arts & Crafts Movement sought to bring the concept of the hand made back to the forefront as not to be totally over run by factory produced goods. Though the mingei movement has its proponents today, it was the first generation of mingei potters that helped launch a revolution among potters and whose influence is still felt today.

Among the early mingei potters, Ueda Tsuneji (1914-1987) stands out for the practical and elegant works that he produced in shinsha, seihakuji, hakuji and neriage. He apprenticed with Kawai Kanjiro and even studied wheel throwing with Hamada Shoji for a time, but it is under Kawai that he learned the "studio secrets" of the Chinese T'ang techniques of neriage and nerikomi. Though quite adept at a number of styles, Ueda's mastery of neriage stands out as bold and rich pattern integrated within his simple and common forms. Working in a variety of techniques, his neriage created overall patterns as well as designs woven into form. The illustrated mizusashi in four views shows how adeptly Ueda built pattern that worked with and enriched each sides creating four associated but individual views around the pot. Though neriage/nerikomi are common  enough techniques today, Ueda mastered the process through trial and error when few others sought to marry mingei pottery with long forgotten ancient techniques for everyday use and admiration.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

E-SHINO II

I put together another slideshow of a chawan that I had pass through last week. This large and bold chawan in E-Shino style was made by Suzuki Goro and was both a handful and an eyeful as well. Casual in appearance, the bold iron decoration gives one the feeling of directness and spontaneity and above all it is uninhibited; probably the best description of Suzuki's work. About the only thing wrong with this chawan was the fact that it didn't stick around longer for me to study and play with, the large number of pictures I took will have to fill in the void.

OMOTE

Though most likely known for his Persian blue, Sancai and luster pottery, Kato Takuo (1917-2005) was first and foremost a Mino potter. Designated Juyo Mukei Bunkazai in 1995 for his Sansai/Sancai works, Takuo was a product of the Mino tradition and Kobei-gama's diversity before he became interested in Mid-Eastern pottery. Illustrated is a classic Kato Takuo Shino chawan, which along with Seto-Guro, he excelled at. This chawan has a wonderful tapering form and luscious surface which presents a great landscape further accentuated by the rich coloration of the piece. The horizontal ridge and the application of more glaze below it create an engaging face (omote) for this chawan and beckon to the observer, use me. There is a certain sophistication in the simplicity of good chawan and I think this bowl is no exception.

PORCELAIN SLIP AND ORIBE

Illustrated is a teabowl I made a short while back and used in a blog post about pinholing and excessive gas during firing. The bowl came out and it seems like I have most of the gas problem solved. The Oribe glaze is composed of both iron and copper and tends to pinhole now and again as part of its nature so a piece the size of the teabowl may end up with a couple of small and insignificant pinholes and I can live with that. The real point of the test is using the porcelain slurry slip giving the bowl a great tactile effect as well as being quite animated visually high lighting the varying shades and textures of the oribe glaze. I particularly enjoy how the glaze runs down the channels  made by combing the slip pooling around the base and creating a swirling copper blue-green effect adding more depth and variety to the surface. I think this glaze and slip are close to being as fine tuned as possible and there is some sense of reward in this problem solving but I suspect my testing is far from over.

"The reward of a thing well done is to have done it." Ralph Waldo Emerson

PRACTICED DESIGN

If you think of Shino in a broad sense, one naturally thinks of Muji-Shino, Aka-Shino, Nezumi-Shino and E-Shino and the stellar pots and surfaces of modern masters like Arakawa Toyozo, Kato Tokuro, Hayashi Shotaro, Suzuki Osamu, Wakao Toshisada and Hori Ichiro among others. Though there are variations within the glazes used by these and other Mino specialists, the glazes are readily identifiable and have a similarity in surface, appearance and styles. On the other hand there is Oni-Shino which varies radically from the traditional Shino and has such wild variations even within the context of what is that glaze. Though a number of modern potters make what they term Oni-Shino, for simplicity sake, I am only referring to the works of Tsukigata Nahiko. Tsukigata's use of Shino and iron together with ash from the wood firing created a myriad of effects and surfaces that had never been seen before his creation and rarely since his death in 2006, though his son, Tsukigata Akihiko carries on the style and techniques rather well. It is the serendipitous portions of clay, Shino and iron glazes together with a balanced addition of ash that builds spectacular surfaces that are conveniently stirred together with the assistance of the fury of fire in his anagama wood kiln. Each and every pot a canvas and each and every piece radically different but intimately connected in an exciting body of work.

Illustrated is a detail shot of a large Tsukigata Nahiko mizusashi that I recently handled. The contrast between the iron, ash and pure translucent Shino is quite astounding but the real standout variation is the state of the iron which has made glaze runs down the surface of the pot. If you look carefully, you see thousands of iron crystal speckles looking like copper filings in a rich Japanese lacquer as if painted intentionally on the pot. As you turn the pot and catch light from various light sources, the surface appears alive, moving and animated with what happens by inspired and well practiced design or fiery happenstance, though one can't thoroughly dismiss a determined potter's spirit either. I can't exactly say I am surprised at the rich variation in this pot or others by Tsukigata Nahiko, but I can say, I am constantly amazed by them.

"How ridiculous and how strange to be surprised at anything which happens in life." Marcus Aurelius

BLUE MONDAY XXI

I put together this slideshow from pictures I had taken some time ago, the bottle/vase is a Persian influenced piece, toruko-ao style by Kato Kenji. The vivid foliate underglaze decoration reminds me of both Persian tiles and illustrated manuscripts of a time long ago. This is a simple pot with a streamlined form created by panels along the surface that were made to decorate. I am always impressed by the attention to detail and all the effort that goes in to each and every pot by Kato Kenji, despite size, form or surface, he tried to create vivid and animated pots every time he sat at the wheel and later when putting brush to clay. I hope that sentiment is better understood through this slideshow.

NARUMI

Narumi-Oribe is one of the more playful styles of Oribe where instead of a white background a reddish one is used in its place. Over the reddish background the use of iron, black and white pigments are used to decorate the surface giving way to a great number of designs in playful, whimsical and representational depictions and it is possible the style originated from a particular type of textile design and decoration from the 16th and 17th century. I find this style very engaging as it really does have an animated and whimsical feeling which can be so eloquently seen in the modern pottery of Suzuki Goro and Ikeda Syugo. While getting ready for a kiln firing recently I decided to make up a quick narumi test by mixing red iron and titanium together which I added to a thinned down porcelain slip. The resulting image shows the test which was also over painted in white slip and black pigment and glazed over in my alkaline clear while the rest of the bowl was glazed in an iron rich Oribe. Though there is always room for improvement, the appearance came out rather well for such a spur of the moment indulgence.

ALL THAT GLITTERS II

Big and beautiful, this large porcelain tsubo is by pioneering potter, Ono Hakuko. Based on an ancient Chinese technique she learned from Kato Hajime, this melon form tsubo has vertical ridges that divide the form up with panels of gold filling in between each divide. The pot is covered in one of Ono's characteristic yellow glazes that accentuates both the gold foil and the simple noble form. It has been written that she spent over five years perfecting the Sung inspired kinsai technique and no potter before , during or after her has become as synonymous with this particular style. This is likely due in part  to her intuitive use of decoration and space and the unique feel, or atmosphere that her pieces illicit through years of countless experiments and trial and error. There is a wonderful narrative created on and below the surface of her pots that show how uniquely suited Ono Hakuko was to a style based on the past and yet so skillfully displayed and modern in her adept hands.

SHINO

After posting the Arakawa Toyozo Shino mizusashi last week, I remembered that somewhere I had another illustration of a similar design on a scroll painting. Illustrated is the image painted in ink from a mounted scroll, kakejiku by Arakawa. The image is a simple Shino chawan with a casual landscape decorating the bowl with the caption that reads; SHINO. It is unclear why the simple caption, but having seen a number of his scroll, several of this design and even more of his Shino chawan, this image is the epitome of Shino as the scroll clearly states.

"and when I think of the Momoyama, the first thing which floats to my mind is shino. If I think about shino, than Mino comes to mind. It seems as though shino has become rather famous."  Arakawa Toyozo

See this blog post for a previous version of the same image;

http://albedo3studio.blogspot.com/2011/09/chawan-scroll.html

IRON KESHIKI

Illustrated is a pot that you don't see every day, a casually glazed and decorated Shino mizusashi by Arakawa Toyozo. Though all Shino, the form has a certain amount of Karatsu inspiration in the making but the glaze and classic iron underglaze decoration of a mountain and tree landscape is all Mino and pure Arakawa. The thin glaze created a blushed hue in the firing rather than a more pure Shino white surface and there are areas around the top portion of the pot where ash has landed creating a very nice effect. The underglaze decoration used on this mizusashi is typical of Arakawa's work and can be seen on a large number of his pots though this particular rendition has a very Momoyama suiboku style feeling to the design easily at home painted in ink on paper as it is on ceramic. The gallery where the lid rests is fully glazed over and has no scars from wad impressions so the pot was made without a ceramic lid and comes complete with a custom made ro-iro lacquer one which highlights the rough wood grain. I guess I will always think of this pot as the mizusashi with the great keshiki with the wonderful landscape.

"The landscape belongs to the person who looks at it..."     Ralph Waldo Emerson

(Photo used with the permission of a private collector.)

WE ARE STARDUST

I spent the afternoon tooling pots on and off the wheel today while listening to a cd I made with some great 70s classics from Cat Stevens to CSNY and Joni Mitchell and thought to share the moment with two versions of one of the greatest and most pivotal songs of the 1970s, WOODSTOCK written by Joni Mitchell and preformed by her and another version by CSNY. Enjoy.

Joni Mitchell - WOODSTOCK

CSNY - WOODSTOCK